Evelyn here,
This entry and following three entries should be read in sequence.
As you know, I have been posting entries on the subject of the most ominous social problem within America’s borders and that is racism in some its forms. Before I continue let me state that I was borne and bred right here in the U. S, and regardless of all social problems I have witnessed in my half century of living, I truly love this country. However, I am not blind to or proud of some of its less than worthy attitudes of the past that persist today.
When I was a naive teen in the late 60’s I was caught in the middle of few race riots at the high school that I attended in my home town, (not in Saint Petersburg). I learned from those experiences that racism (in any form) was a detestable thing and that the hatred when stirs is never constructive but destroys some part of everyone it touches whether they were innocence bystanders or active participants. No one walks away the same person. Some are broken, many are more enraged, but all are losers.
The people who have been harassing my family and me surprised me by using the race issue to cause us additional problems by twisting my words and the actual situation I did not think they would go this route, and I knew it the wrong path follow. However, I have since learned that some people when seeking revenge are nothing but evil minded. Still the situation proved that for some reason it was a taboo to describe a black male antagonist of being black (at least it seemed that was a taboo for me to call a black male antagonist black). To do this was considering as racist. However, I consider it accurate.
I could not possibly describe a black male as anything else but a black male. Yet, many blacks in this small community took statement as an affronted. As renege to prove, God only knows what, whenever they saw and/or heard me conversing with someone of another race, or reading, writing, viewing anything about another racial background, these revenge seekers would flat out lied to the to people of other racial background about my beliefs about and motives. Keep in mind that some of these harassers are among those I have reported as possessing and selling illegal drugs as well as the occasional unwelcome womanizers.
Revenge is what it has all been for, and the truth has meant nothing. These antagonists went from place to place trying the cause trouble, and no matter how often I report their actions, they manipulated their way out of it. Manipulating people into thinking what was not true of me appeared to become a sick kind game.
Ideas like, I was “uppity” and “reaching to far above my “place”, “needed to learn my place my place” began to become a frequent theme to undermined everything I have ever learned about self-esteem, personal image, assertiveness, upward mobility and race relations. As a former psych. nurse to know that this was happening around me was grating.
It was also horrifying to learn that my son was hurt out there by persons unknown and that he had been told that he was not “college material”, an idea that he would have never obtained in our household. He had also been manipulated into believing that I had lied to him and he was manipulated into doing things that he would never have done had not their influence effected him. I prayed that he would see through all the lies.
